My First Day Episode 11: Jamex And Einar De La Torre

A tale of two border artists are told on the podcast My First Day. It is 12:46. You are listening to KPBS Midday Edition . This is KPBS Midday Edition. I am Maureen Cavanaugh. KPBS is exploring new ways to create stories you want to listen to, stories that originate right here in San Diego. Artists, Jamex de la Torre and Elinar de la Torre live on the Mexico side of the border. Glass sculptures have been held around the world. The work is on permanent display in San Diego at the main library and the San Diego international Airport. The brothers first came to San Diego as children from Mexico. The summer of 1972, they moved in with the grandmother. Here is an excerpt of their story from the podcast, My First Day as produced and hosted by Andrew Brackett. The first voice you will hear is Elinar de la Torre. We visited our cousins who were living in San Diego. They were playing records. We are learning English and to hear the root vernacular Street was interesting because they would be laughing and we would try to figure out why they were laughing. As we started to learn more English, we started to understand what was funny about it. That is ingrained in our might not just because it was cutting edge comity at the time and not just that but also for us, it was a way to learn the vernacular Street at the time. I still laugh at that stuff, to tell you the truth. The family settled in Dana point, it is a beach town in orange county where they started school and began to adjust to new surroundings. We were dealing with a new life and a new environment. It will overwhelm you. Start with the language and everything else. Like any kid, you want to fit in. It is easy to understand how you turn the page because you do not have -- you have to deal with what is on the next page. You cannot go back. There is not time It is interesting as immigrants come we go through these deep longing and while you are trying to get adjusted and before you know it, you are living like anybody else. That is what we all need to do, keep going. When you are dropped into a class, and you do not speak English, it is amazing how quickly kids can learn. If you want to have friends, you have to speak to them in their language. We were immersed and we had to assimilate, sink or swim. We assimilated. We did it without even thinking about it. Now, we were part of the culture of the United States. One aspect, there are kids in Guatemala that would go to church. All the churches carry this heavy mystery. They are so overly decorated. There's all the saints and a lot of guilty. When we first moved up to Dana point, the family continued to go to Catholic churches. For about three times because the churches were all mortared. You are supposed to be in a church. There was no mystery. It did not take long to say this is not the same. The God we knew could not have possibly live there. [ laughter ] It did not make any sense. They looked like Catholic Church was designed by IKEA. We visited a Protestant church. Do you remember that? Even then, we were wondering, it's so a steer. The crucifix does not even have a course. Where's the fun in that? It's boring. It was interesting that we were not really exposed to Mexican and American Chicano experience at all. We were fully immersed and like I said, we were just another kid in town and we did not think that much about being Mexican except once in a while. For us, there was a division. We were Mexican, yes. We were becoming American, yes. It was interesting when we went to university, we were asked board -- exposed to other races in the United States which was wonderful for us. We also were exposed to the Chicano culture which we were not a part of but this idea of being Mexican-American was not our experience. Our experience was Mexican or Americans and it was two different sides of the brain. It was Mexican and then the negative language and then culturally, or we could be fully American because we had become that but for us to see the culture of a mixture the two was very eye-opening. For us, it was English or Spanish. Spanglish was frowned upon. For us to start playing with that, as we became artist was a lot of fun to dig deep and see that that was part of our experience. It also included the mixture of the two. That idea of mixtures and using different comp -- combinations cannot only be found in artwork but also how they work together which can be traced to the Mac childhood. You adjust to the fact to the fact that when the family integrates her go through it trauma, as kids, you know, you know when you draw a hat and you fold it over and next person has ahead? That was one of the common past time we would have as a kid. The other thing is, we always had money to play around. You know, all we had was Clay. Clay was an ongoing collaboration with your brothers in a sense. You could make anything with it. After finishing high school, both of them moved to long breach and a studied and focused on sculptor. Looking for a larger space, they began looking for land in Mexico and I bought a property in Guadalupe Valley. They added a house in San Diego. Aside from having a space to create work, they found another meaning to what the land gave them. For us, it was a homestead. It was a way to look at going back. It is funny when you are from a place and you are born somewhere and you feel like you are from there no matter what, no matter how much we assimilated. We needed to go back to Mexico. You know? Initial motivation for this was to -- it was an initial idea. Eventually, the whole project became about us having a homestead to go back to Mexico. Other meanings came into it. The advantages for us on being on both sides of the border is that you can pick and choose. We bring some things and we buy them Mexico and we bring up whatever and we go cross the border. But picking and choosing is essential because then you get what you want out of where you are and we were able to feed off of both sides. You heard Jamex de la Torre and Damino Del Rio third speaking on the podcast, My First Day. It is produced and hosted by Andrew Brackett. To listen to the rest of the story, go to www.kpbs.org . Be sure to watch KPBS evening addition at 5:00 and join us again tomorrow for KPBS Midday Edition. If you miss a show, you can check out the podcast at www.kpbs.org. I am Maureen Cavanaugh. Thank you for listening .